An optical fiber coating removal apparatus has been known which removes a coating material of a terminal portion of each optical fiber in order to connect the optical fibers (coated optical fibers) each having an optical fiber bare wire and the coating material coating the optical fiber bare wire (for example, refer to Patent Document 1).
In the optical fiber coating removal apparatus, the coating material at the terminal portion of the optical fiber is removed by a pair of coating removal blades provided in the optical fiber coating removal apparatus as follows. First, the optical fiber is sandwiched between a pair of upper and lower coating removal blades from a radial direction of the optical fiber bare wire within a range where the pair of coating removal blades bites into the coating material but does not reach the optical fiber bare wire. Thereafter, a portion of the optical fiber extending from the pair of coating removal blades to one side in a longitudinal direction of the optical fiber is moved in a direction of pulling apart (pulling-out direction) with respect to a portion of the optical fiber extending from the pair of coating removal blades to another side in the longitudinal direction of the optical fiber (terminal portion) and then, a portion of the coating material into which the coating removal blades bite is tore off. As a result, the coating material can be pulled out from the terminal portion of the optical fiber and removed.
Patent Document 1 discloses an optical fiber coating removal apparatus in which a pair of guides for supporting an optical fiber so as to sandwich the optical fiber from a radial direction of an optical fiber bare wire is disposed adjacent to a pair of coating removal blades. An interval between the pair of guides is fixed so as to be equivalent to the thickness of the optical fiber (for example, the diameter of a single core optical fiber or the thickness of a tape optical fiber). By supporting the optical fiber with the pair of guides, the optical fiber bare wire is prevented from coming into contact with the coating removal blade and being damaged therewith when the coating material is pulled out from the terminal portion of the optical fiber.    [Patent Document 1] PCT International Publication No. WO2010/100912
In recent years, there are various types of optical fibers having different thicknesses of the optical fiber (for example, the thickness of the coating material covering the optical fiber bare wire). However, the above conventional optical fiber coating removal apparatus has poor workability and is not preferable, since an operator needs to exchange the pair of guides according to the thickness of the optical fiber. Although there is a method of making a mechanism capable of precisely adjusting the interval between the pair of guides, an expensive and complicated structure is required for such a mechanism.